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Troy, NY...where have I seen that city before? Oh, I remember, it’s connected with Soros. “BILLIONAIRE’S BUSINESS GETS TAXPAYER DOLLARS (SOROS)
boblonsberry.com ^ | 07/02/09 | Bob Lonsberry
Posted on Thursday, July 02, 2009 9:16:34 AM by shortstop (Free Republic)
In Troy, New York, where a quarter of the children live below the poverty level and the average household makes less than $30,000 a year, the 29th richest man in the world is being given more than 300,000 taxpayer dollars to open a restaurant.
They call it economic development. What it is is a sin. What it is is welfare for the wealthy, proof positive that raping the taxpayer is what the government does best.
Meet George Soros. He owns Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. Specifically, his company – Soros Strategic Partners – owns 70 percent of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. He also owns a lot of other things, enough to make him one of the wealthiest people on earth.
He also happens to be the largest individual donor to the Democratic Party. He has bankrolled a variety of grand liberal schemes. But this isn’t about his politics, it is about his perqs. And about the audacity of businesses who browbeat local simpletons into signing blank checks on the taxpayers’ account. Like the deal in Troy.
Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is a very successful small chain of rib joints. It recently won some award for the quality of its food, and it has the buzz – mostly generated by its New York City outlet – that breeds stardom. It is a very cool place. It is also very profitable.
And it has decided to expand into Troy. Troy is the place that put the rust in Rust Belt. One of America’s first successful steel cities, it was also one of America’s first failed steel cities. Part of the greater Albany area, it is a mid-sized city in one of the most financially troubled states in the country. But Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has come calling. And it has found just the building it wants.
Which is where the give-aways begin. The building has almost $220,000 in back taxes owed on it. Now, typically, if you buy a property with any liens against, you pay those. In the real world, those are going to be tacked onto the purchase price. Unless you’re Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.
In this instance, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has pressured the local industrial development agency into paying the back taxes on the building it wants to buy. That’s $218,000. Further, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is getting a five-year deferment on the property tax that improvements on its property would have otherwise obligated it to. That five-year lag will continue for 20 years. Meaning that Dinosaur Bar-B-Que will spend the next two decades paying less than its fair share of property taxes – while the locally owned businesses against which it competes will have to pay their full obligation.
But wait, there’s more. Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is also being given exemption from $60,000 in sales tax for materials used to improve its building, and the $53,000 fee for recording its mortgage is being waived. Let’s do the math on that. Without even considering the five-year property-tax lag, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is being given $330,000 to come to Troy. To open a restaurant. Which will employ cooks and waitresses. And compete against locally owned mom-and-pop restaurants, all of which are required to pay their taxes and which have received not a dime of taxpayer money.
And let’s not forget that the guy who owns 70 percent of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has a personal fortune of some $11 billion. This guy is the 29th-richest person in the world. And his restaurants are very profitable. But to expand, they need a massive government stipend.
This is preposterous, especially to the other businesses in Troy who are dumbfounded by this huge incentive package for an out-of-towner creating a handful of low-paying jobs. This is an illustration of just how bad things can get, of how the insanity of “economic development” can waste money and strain credibility. Troy is a good place. It has a lot of good people, a lot of hard-working people, and a lot of honest businesses.
But it unfortunately has some stupid people working at its IDA. And they are whizzing the taxpayers’ money away. Because private enterprise should be private enterprise. If you want to expand your business, you should pay for it. No business should be subsidized, it should be sink or swim – that is the free market, that is capitalism. And that is what we must defend. And insanity like this Dinosaur Bar-B-Que deal is what we must reject and defeat.” You just never know about coincidences...I can’t imagine the connection, but perhaps someone more clever than me can find another thread. What else is happening in Troy???